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Oil and Gas Service Unit Operator

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AVG. SALARY

$58,180

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EDUCATION

No standard requirement

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JOB OUTLOOK

Decreasing

What To Learn

High School

What high school courses should you take if you're interested in this career? Get your answers from the Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources cluster Power, Structural and Technical Systems pathway.

Beyond High School

Here's a list of programs that you should consider if you're interested in this career:

Education Level

Education training and experience are required at different levels for success in different occupations.

No standard requirement

Oil and gas service unit operators do not have formal educational requirements and will typically receive moderate-term on-the-job training.

Insider Info

Additional Information

Post-secondary training in mechanics, electrical work, electronics, power engineering, chemical engineering technology, petroleum engineering technology or mechanical engineering technology is preferred.

Grace McDougald is the manager of community relations for a pipeline company. She says her employer looks for people with a technical background. That could be an associate's degree from a two-year college in a technical discipline -- hydraulics, environmental engineering or mechanical engineering.

Her company also provides extensive in-house training to its employees.

"Oil pipeline operators need to have good common sense, be able to problem solve and they must be able to follow directions," she says.

Oil pipeline operator Lawanda Craft notes that people applying for jobs with her company are required to take an exam. It tests applicants' math skills as well as their mechanical abilities.

There are questions involving schematics, such as, "If Switch A is turned on, which light bulb will burn?"

"Girls often have trouble with this because they don't study those subjects in school," says Craft. "If you're interested in this career, be sure to take mathematics and mechanical courses."

Brad Ashcroft says that his company provides training to its own employees as well as to people with other companies.

A new employee will train both in the control room and outside. They learn using online procedures, as well as practicing with computer simulations of situations.

Most employees take six months to a year before they reach the place where they can work alone.

Oil pipeline operators must be detail-oriented, flexible and have good color vision. They must also be good at working with machinery and must have good people skills, since they work on a team.